It may be doubted whether exhausting mountain
rambles are the best restorative for hard-
worked professional men, who have been pent
in cities for the ten months previous. The
change of their physical conditions is too abrupt
and complete to be healthy. From situations
in which they are almost entirely screened from
radiation, both from within and without, they
rush into floods of light, showers of sunbeams,
and other influences darted out by our great
luminary, the sun, while they incur sudden
losses of animal heat unknown to their city
experience. It cannot be a very salutary tonic to
be roasted at one end and iced at the other.
The effects of the cooking are visible in the
noses and lips they bring down to the valley.
Starlight nights passed on the mountain-side
may have worse effects than the temporary
suffering from cold. Moon-blindness, we are
told, is caused by the chill produced by radiation
from the eyes; the shining of the moon
being merely an accompaniment to the clearness
of the atmosphere. A member of the Alpine
Club, who made an ineffectual attempt to ascend
the Schreckhorn while it was still a virgin peak,
never recovered his eyesight perfectly after the
two nights which he spent among the snow.

Michelet, speaking of the beneficial effects of
change of air (La Mer, p. 360), says:
"Transitions, especially, ought to be made with great
caution.

"Can we, without preparation, without some
modification of living and regimen, be abruptly
transferred from a completely inland climate
(Paris, Lyons, or Dijon) to a sea-side climate?
Can we, until we have breathed the sea air for
a considerable time, begin taking sea baths?
Can we, without some habituation of prudent
hydrotherapy, commenced inland, brave, in the
open air, the nervous constriction, the horripilation
caused by cold water which sticks to you
as you get out of it, and often with a high wind
blowing? These preliminary questions will more
and more attract the attention of medical men.

"The extreme rapidity of railway travelling
is an anti-medical circumstance. To go, as we
do, in twenty hours from Paris to the Mediterranean,
traversing different climates from hour
to hour, is the most imprudent act in the world
for a nervous person to commit. You reach
Marseilles with your head in a whirl, full of
agitation, inebriated. When Madame de
Sévigné took a month to go from Brittany to
Provence, she passed gradually and by cautious
stages through the violent opposition of those
two climates. She proceeded insensibly from
the western to the eastern maritime zone, and
thence to the inland climate of Burgundy.
Then, slowly following the Upper Rhône into
Dauphiny, she confronted with less difficulty
the high winds of Valence and Avignon.
Finally, resting for a while at Aix, in inland
Provence, away from the Rhône and from the coast,
she became a naturalised Provençale, as far as
breathing and the chest were concerned. Then,
and then only, she encountered the Mediterranean."
Contrast this with the instantaneous
flights made now-o'-days from Westminster
Hall to the top of Mont Blanc.

We shall be told that " mountaineering" is
a manly exercise. It is so, inasmuch as it is
not womanly. But it is not noblemanly when
it is selfish. Is it manly to expose a parent, a
brother, or a wife, to the chance of quite
uncalled-for sorrow? To lead them into danger
perhaps for the satisfaction of recovering our
remains? To tempt hardworking guides, mostly
family men, to expose their lives for no adequate
object; bringing them, for our amusement, to
the condition of Roman gladiators, who might
exclaim, " Morituri te salutamus," " We take off
our caps to you, on our way to destruction"?

Is gambling manly? A gambler, for the sake
of temporary excitement, takes his chance of
worldly ruin; but he is led on by the expectation
that he will one day make his fortune—perhaps
that very day or night. Reckless mountaineering
is greater folly than gambling; because, for
the sake of overstrained emotions, it risks all,
with nothing to win but an empty boast.

When Alpine Clubbists hold that it is " a
question of sentiment," we may ask whether it
be not rather a question of duty. The great
argument against suicide urged by moralists is,
that a man has not the right to dispose of his
life as he pleases. Life is a precious gift, not
to be lightly thrown away. It is not a man's
own, but a trust conferred upon him by his
Maker, to employ to the best of his ability.
Has, then, a man the right to cause the wanton
sacrifice (even in his own proper person) of a
useful member of society, by the snapping of
a rope, the slipping of a stone, the failure of a
grapnel, or the imperfect freezing of a bridge of
snow?

When sensible people discover that they are
on a wrong track, they confess it, and retrace
their steps. Our climbing enthusiasts may do
the same, without exposing themselves to the
slightest reproach as to want of courage.
Nobody will say or believe that our countrymen
(whether Irish, Scotch, or English) are afraid
to face danger. But danger should be nobly
faced. Compare the man who ascends Mount
Cervin, " prepared to conquer the mountain or
die," as reported in the newspapers, with him
who braves the cholera, or visits typhus patients.

A TREMENDOUS LEAP.

IT was, under the circumstances, the oddest,
though at the same time the most commonplace
and unexciting ghost-story I ever heard in
my life. It related to a giant, some ten or
twelve feet high, who, many hundred years ago,
dwelt on a rather high mountain in——shire,
and greatly oppressed the inhabitants of the
neighbouring villages. Since the time of his
death, his ghost had, from time to time,
appeared in a certain green lane close to the
foot of the mountain; where it was apparently
persecuted by a troop of smaller ghosts,
supposed to represent the victims of his